A sheep in Wolffe's clothing?

It was Barack Obama himself who first proposed that Newsweek reporter Richard Wolffe make a play to be this generation’s Theodore White—the legendary journalist whose insider account of the 1960 election painted John F. Kennedy in heroic light.

In the 2008 version, Obama provided the insider access. And Wolffe lavishly delivered on the heroic-light end of the bargain.

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But the early response to his new book, “ Renegade: The Making of a President” has made one thing clear: Wolffe is not living in a Teddy White era of journalism.

Far from vaulting him to the top ranks of the profession — as happened to White and a parade of other reporters with intimate access to winning presidential candidates —Wolffe’s Obama journey ended with him out of mainstream political reporting, making his living as a public relations operative.

And far from being the toast of Newsweek, which once built its franchise around reporters who were close to the powerful, Wolffe now has a frosty relationship with his former employer.

At a book party at Washington’s Café Atlantico Monday night, there were quail eggs and caviar but no Newsweek editors, who declined to speak on-the-record about Wolffe or his book.

Some of his former colleagues grumble privately that the magazine gained little of news value from Wolffe’s access to Obama and his inner circle, and suggest he lost detachment as he became more enraptured by a politician with whom he shares personal and ideological sympathies.

Some Republicans say the same thing publicly.

" Richard Wolffe was doing PR for Barack Obama throughout the campaign,” said Michael Goldfarb, a former aide to John McCain and a writer for the conservative Weekly Standard. “At least now, with the new book and the new job, he's dropped even the pretense of being a journalist."

Comments like these suggest Wolffe could become a flashpoint in the larger debate over whether journalists are too enamored with Obama’s biography and personal style, and not being sufficiently skeptical of his grand policy plans.

“Obama has inspired a collective fawning” in the media, columnist Robert J. Samuelson recently wrote. At the recent White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, Obama joked, “Most of you covered me; all of you voted for me.”

“Renegade” is billed on its cover as “based on exclusive interviews with Barack Obama.” The footnotes detail 21 such interviews. They were so exclusive, as it happens, that key elements of them apparently did not appear contemporaneously in Newsweek, which was footing the bill as Wolffe flew around the country with Obama for two years. Nor did they appear in the magazine’s own post-election volume.

Unlike White’s classic “Making of the President” series, Wolffe’s book makes no real effort to penetrate the other side of the presidential race. There’s not a single reference to reporting from the McCain campaign in “Renegade”; Steve Schmidt, McCain’s top campaign aide, says that’s because Wolffe didn’t do any. “You’re kidding, right?” Schmidt said when asked if Wolffe had talked with him for the book. “He didn’t talk to McCain folks during the campaign.”

No matter the balance questions, Wolffe’s access did pay some dividends. He gets Obama accusing former President Bill Clinton of telling “bald-faced lies” – and the news that the candidate met secretly in Chicago with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Those revelations have gotten the book noticed, and it’s received a favorable review from the New York Times.

All of that will be good for sales — for the book, but not for Newsweek, which Federal Election Commission records show reimbursed the Obama campaign nearly $170,000 for the cost of flying Wolffe around the country in the candidate's bubble.

“We should have had most of what’s in the book,” said one Newsweek staffer, who complained that the magazine had gotten little in exchanged for the softened reporting that often comes with access.